Another "Top 10" List #Wellness #FitFluential

As my 44th birthday (technically my 45th; seems nobody ever counts their original birthday as 1, as it should be. even though i will be 44 years old, it is technically my 45th birthday) rapidly approaches (unlike the end off this sentence), I have decided to divulge some information about myself based on a list of "10 Things You Must Give Up to Move Forward" which I found on the interwebs that were created by someone much brighter than I am (as indicated by the fact that I cannot recall the source). <~~thought you'd never see that period, didn't you?!

10 Things You Must Give Up to Move Forward
1. Letting the opinions of others control your life
2. The shame of past failures
3. Being indecisive about what you want
4. Procrastinating on the goals that matter to you
5. Choosing to do nothing
6. Your need to be right
7. Running from problems that should be fixed
8. Making excuses rather than decisions
9. Overlooking the positive points in your life
10. Not appreciating the present moment

Worry not, intrepid reader. I will not be going through all of these in one fell blog post. Nope. For your continued reading pleasure I will drag these out for a few posts. Perhaps 3. Or maybe 5. You'll just have to tune in later to find out. Let's jump right in with number

5. Choosing to do nothing
This is, as present, nearly impossible for me to do. I am in motion most of the time, and when I seem idle, my brain is still trying to glom onto at least one or two of the ideas that are flying around in my head. This makes it difficult for me to fall asleep, or to return to sleep should I be lucky enough to awaken during the night.
This past Saturday I chose to try to do nothing of import and drove 30 minutes to go window shopping at stores that are 5 minutes away. My intent was to use the drive time and the different location as a mini-escape. Turns out that it was an impromptu lesson in doing nothing, as I had to stand around and wait 25 minutes for a nice mechanic named Mike to come along and rescue my keys that I had locked in my car for safe keeping. Good times.
In the coming year, I will, unfortunately, have plenty of time do do nothing. Which I will promptly put to use by working out more, being more creative, blogging more, and continuing to chase after that dream of inventing a perpetual motion machine (ok, maybe not that one). Does it count as "choosing to do nothing" if I schedule time to do nothing? I think it does.

As I have used up my comma quota (quotient?) for blogging today I will leave you with this: Which one of those 10 Things do you think would give you the biggest challenge? The least? Start with that one and work your way toward the biggest. I will be.

-Gene-

not much for something

I have been thinking a lot about trying to raise funds to send our oldest to Thailand. Don't get me wrong, I have also been thinking about raising funds to get him BACK from Thailand...sheesh. While doing this, I was looking around at the ways that other people were raising monies, and my endeavor was missing a key element; the "what's in it for me" factor.
You know the one. Girl Scouts want money, so you give them $50 for 2 boxes of cookies. Boy Scouts want money so you buy outrageously priced pop-corn. We've all done it in one form or another. Do you know how many millions of those yellow wrist bands LiveStrong has sold? Me, either, but I am sure that it is more than 28 Million (see what i did there?).
A coupla weeks ago I posted a letter from Mike, our son who wants to go to Thailand and give baths to elephants and pick up monkey poo. Or something like that. He went into great detail as to what the trip involves, but I was probably playing Angry Birds or updating myfitnesspal (let's see...how many cheese sticks DID I have today??) and missed all of the nitty gritty. If you'd like, you can read about it by clicking the link at the top that says, "elephant baths and monkey poo", or by clicking this.
Thank you for sticking around this post for so long.....NOW I am about to get to the title subject.

Yes, a t-shirt. I have created a shirt over at cafepress, along with 20 bajillion other people. Heck, if it works for them, it just might work for us.

Unlike most shirts out there, though, this one carries a more personal message. Don't get all mushy on me: this isn't about ME, but about YOU. Or someone you know. How so? Here's how: ever been involved in a training run or in the gym or just on errands, having a crap-tastic day? Sure you have. We ALL have. What do many of us do (no, no, I'm NOT offering free pints of Ben & Jerry's) in these situations? We hang our heads. We look toward the ground, searching for something to give us a reason to pick our heads up and get back into the game of life. It is exactly this action that lead me to create this style of shirt. Without giving it all away here, I cordially invite you to go to my shop and look at the shirts. I kept the selection simple and the mark-up low, and am very willing to add products. Simply send me an email with your request and after I have added it to the store I will send you an email letting you know that it has been added.

If you have already contributed, and would like a shirt, please let me know and we can make arrangements.

Again, thank you for sticking with me, and thank you for helping me help our son realize a dream.

Geno